Talk:Beta Colony
And on the dark side..... There are hints that all is not Hunky Dory on 'Glittering, Hi-tech, enlightened' Beta Colony. It is strongly implied that the famous Betan 'therapy' is used to brainwash social devients into compliance and we know from Cordelia's experience that patient consent can be retroactive. The existence of 'Shelters' and the need to 'Register' to find work or get 'Cards' entitling one to food and other necessities suggests that poverty is not so much non-existent as fully and generously subsidized. One wonders just how many non-working 'citizens' the system is carrying.....The 'reserved' places for non-Betans in the Survey Service remind me of the quotas once put on the number of Jews who could register in Ivy League colleges or on certain nationalities entering the United States. Is this a guarantee of places for non-Betans (why?) or an attempt to keep Betans dominant in the closest thing they have to a military force? How many native Betans work in those famous research laboratories? How many native Betans bother to work at all? Cordelia is proud of Beta Colony's written constitution - which guarentees free access to information (ie: a comsole) along with God knows what else but has resulted in a government headed by a president nobody will admit to voting for where Press Officer is a cabinet post and Jingoist propaganda mercilessly pushed. War is a famous way of distracting the populace from problems at home. And then there's the utopian sexual mores...Let's think about those for a moment: Women are required to surrender control of their fertility to the state at puberty and become sexually available at the same time. Age of consent must be twelve or thirteen, just lovely. And exactly what happens to girls who don't want to have a alien implant put into their bodies or to be surgically deflowered? What happens to those who have accidents - and don't tell me implants never fail - ? What happens to their babies?? Meanwhile men and boys are completely free of state interference in their bodies hmmm..... My guess is sex tourism is rapidly overtaking R&D as the main source of Beta's GNP - if it hasn't passed it already - and social stress is becoming noticiable hence the playing up of 'The Thin Blue Line' as a distraction. 19:00, September 26, 2012 (UTC)Roxana I'm adding a new segment to the Background section of Beta Colony, but I'm also wondering if it should be presented as a "History" category instead. Westbrook (talk) 16:01, March 22, 2013 (UTC) I wouldn't complain if I saw it rearranged a bit. This is one of the older planet articles, with a different layout than some of the newer ones. I think the bit about Xav's history as ambassador belongs more in history than background, and really the background that was there before should be called "behind the scenes" since that's the expected title for extra-canonical information. I'd say go ahead, see if it looks better; if so, then commit. KarenHunt (talk) 21:03, March 22, 2013 (UTC) Responding to myself... Thinking more, there's more extra-canonical info that ought to be here as well (more on how child permits work, for example). And Prince Xav info can go into a Tidbits section (a relatively new section name for articles). KarenHunt (talk) 21:18, March 22, 2013 (UTC)